The present invention relates to a method and to a system for monitoring the effectiveness of braking systems of vehicles, particularly rail vehicles.
Braking control systems have the purpose of converting a braking request defined by the driver into a vehicle deceleration. The monitoring of whether the desired vehicle deceleration results from the braking request is normally left to the driver. In the case of rail vehicles, the train engineer, in particular, has the task of recognizing danger situations, such as a faulty response of the braking system or a failure of the braking system and then initiating a safety braking. For avoiding accidents, it is mainly required that disturbances be recognized in time and an emergency braking takes place immediately.
Therefore, the present invention provides a method and a system for monitoring the effectiveness of vehicle braking systems.
The present invention is based on comparing a driver's braking request with the occurring vehicle reaction and of detecting possibly occurring disturbances by a sequential examination of several response criteria and of initiating an emergency or safety braking.
When a braking request of the braking system is not converted into the requested vehicle deceleration, the monitoring device automatically initiates an emergency braking. In this case, existing operating or environmental conditions of the vehicle, such as, for example, the slope of the route, the coefficient of adhesion between the wheel and the rail, are taken into account, so that the vehicle deceleration requested by the driver or the vehicle decelerations maximally possible as a result of the physical marginal conditions are achieved.
An “automatic braking intervention” can take place by way of “signal paths” which, in the case of conventional rail vehicles are to be activated by the driver. Additional intervention possibilities are possible, such as, for example, by switching off braking-force-limiting or braking-force-reducing systems. In other words, instead of an emergency impact button which is normally provided in rail vehicles and is to be operated by the driver, the present invention may have an “intelligent impact button” which is automatically triggered in an emergency and, if desired, an anti-skid protection system may be switched off.
The present invention therefore permits a fast initiation of safety brakings in the event of recognizable disturbances in the braking system. This relieves the driver and significantly increases safety. It is also possible that faulty partial systems of the braking system, for example, the anti-skid protection system, can be switched off automatically. The actually available braking force can therefore be optimally utilized; that is, it can be prevented that the driver erroneously decelerates the vehicle by a lower braking force level than the physically transmissible braking force level.
Other aspects and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detail description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.